In 2016, I opened The Squeezebox on the St. Mary’s Strip. The name was a play on a term for an accordion, an instrument prevalent in much of the music we feature at our live music venue and bar. After opening, The Squeezebox quickly changed the landscape of an already booming street for nightlife. It was a dream come true for my business partners and me, as none of us were from backgrounds of inherited wealth. Owning a business isn’t normally thought of as possible for young Mexican Americans like us.
I come from what my mother lovingly refers to as “humble beginnings,” born into a working-class family on the city’s South Side, the beloved barrio that I still proudly represent with any opportunity to speak of its charms and proud history.
In 2013, when I could no longer bear the mundane daily ritual of the office job I hated, I quit and soon became head honcho of picking up cigarette butts, master of washing pint glasses, and a stickler for ensuring the restrooms at The Friendly Spot Ice House smelled like only the purest of purple Fabuloso. The next three years would be a blur of hard work, sacrifice, and maybe even a little bit of luck that led me to that dream of opening The Squeezebox.
Now that dream and what I’ve worked hard to build is in danger.
The pandemic made a street normally busy with nightlife and entertainment quiet and desolate. As businesses like mine were shuttered and battling to get funding and grants to see if we would make it out of nearly eight months of forced closure, new residents began moving to the area. During this time, I spent many nights on my bar patio alone, thinking about the future.
A year later, restrictions on businesses started to loosen, bars and restaurants started to reopen, and the desire to be out and socialize after a year of lockdown re-energized the St. Mary’s Strip. Just when it appeared that we were back to business as usual, a bond project that was passed in 2017 to beautify the street finally broke ground on construction in 2021, gutting up the entirety of the street and making it troublesome for both neighbors and businesses.
With restricted access to the main road and zero parking available on North St. Mary’s Street due to construction, many patrons take to side streets to find parking. This has created a problem for the neighbors, and many of the complaints related to businesses begin with people parking in front of people’s homes to access bars and restaurants.
There are some complaints that I must say have been hyperbolized. I am down there during peak business hours and can assure you North St. Mary’s Street isn’t the gunshot-ridden warzone that it is often made out to be by the media and a few vocal neighbors. Are there some safety issues? Sure. But no more than any other metropolitan area of a major city.
Business owners don’t want to see guns in our establishments any more than neighbors want to see them in their community, but state legislation has made it easier than ever to obtain a gun in Texas. Instead of pointing fingers at businesses or neighbors and continuing to villainize one another, we should be asking more of our state and local government.
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While the construction may be an eyesore for everyone, it has all but killed several businesses like mine with two third of bars facing a 50% comparative annual loss in revenue per TABC reports. That’s why business owners (and many supporters, employees, and even some residents) reacted with anger and urgency when we learned about an overnight residential parking program pilot proposed by the city just two weeks before it would be put to a council vote.
The proposed program was meant to restrict public street parking from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. to residents only within Tobin Hill. We still do not have clarity on what days of the week this program would be in effect, but my assumption is that it would at the very least affect the busier nights of the week for bars and restaurants, and limit our patrons’ accessibility to these establishments.
The residential parking program would give permits to residents and a number of guest passes for family and friends and essentially privatize public streets that have been accessible and free for public use for decades. Its intention is to help alleviate the complaints of some neighbors who feel that patrons of this area should not be parking around their homes nightly. Again, we have little to no clarity on many details of this proposal, or how it would be enforced or applied, but this confusion is the root of many of the problems and issues with this parking program and the manner in which it has been presented.
The lack of transparency in the process has led us to this point of distrust of our city council district office and damaged our faith in their ability to truly advocate for our needs as both businesses and residents. Thankfully, the vote on the parking pilot has been pushed since we spoke up.
The needs of the businesses and residents are simple, we both want prosperous, safe, and accessible ways to enjoy our neighborhood. We can coexist — as we have for over four decades — but it will take compromise on both sides. We are in a position to start considering real, viable solutions to shared issues and working toward building and restoring real community within our streets.
In a post-construction world, many of the parking issues both residents and businesses are facing will likely be alleviated by wider public streets and the resumed capability of parking on the Strip. Another suggestion worth exploring regarding the issue of littering on streets is the expansion of Centro cleaning crews to the St. Mary’s Strip. I’ve already begun many positive talks about possible solutions with neighbors and businesses, both lifelong and new, including the interim Tobin Hill President Alfonso Robalin, and we all agree mutual solutions can be achieved through an understanding of boundaries and necessity.
Admittedly though, the business community’s patience is wearing thin. Our willingness to listen and cooperate is now overruled by the feeling that our livelihood is being taken away while our neighbors’ property values continue to skyrocket due to the culture we have curated in the area (which will in turn someday create generational wealth for these families). We the creators and curators of said culture will be left with nothing to show for our years of hard work and good faith if we continue to be pushed out.
What makes San Antonio so special is undeniably our culture and all that it entails: the food, music, art, and history of San Antonio are what drive me. We should be working together as a community to preserve the things that made the St. Mary’s Strip the city’s meeting place for all the things we love about our city.
